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LEGACY airlines across the world are under growing pressure to prove that their sustainability ambitions are more than skin-deep. Fleet renewal, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) investments and carbon offset schemes dominate corporate sustainability reports. Yet behind the scenes, many full-service carriers continue to operate with deeply manual workflows – a quiet contradiction that undermines their green credentials.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) illustrates this paradox particularly well. Long celebrated as a benchmark for premium service and operational excellence, the carrier has built its brand on innovation – from fuel-efficient aircraft and inflight recycling to its expanding SAF initiatives. But like many legacy airlines, SIA still relies heavily on paper-based systems for day-to-day cabin operations.

Passenger manifests, meal orders and inflight reports are often printed, prepared and filed manually. Even in premium cabins, orders are still taken by hand on paper slips. In an era when competitors are deploying integrated digital crew apps and real-time service dashboards, such processes feel increasingly out of sync with the sustainability narrative airlines wish to project.

A hidden source of inefficiency

The environmental cost of paper documentation may seem minor compared to jet fuel emissions, but its symbolism matters. It highlights a gap between public commitments and internal execution – and reveals a broader cultural inertia that has slowed digital transformation in legacy carriers.

Each SIA flight involves dozens of cabin crew printing and preparing operational paperwork, multiplied across thousands of flights a year. Emirates, Qatar Airways and British Airways, by contrast, now equip crew with tablets that consolidate flight information, passenger preferences and catering data into a single system. This shift doesn’t just save paper; it enables smarter, more sustainable decisions – reducing food waste, improving inventory management and capturing real-time insights that can inform future efficiency gains.

For airlines striving to cut emissions and resource use, digitalisation represents one of the most underappreciated sustainability levers. Yet for many, it remains a slow-moving ambition rather than a fully realised transformation.

The credibility gap in airline sustainability

Legacy carriers often approach sustainability through visible or high-profile initiatives: new-generation aircraft, SAF blending or plastic reduction campaigns. These are essential, but environmental leadership today is increasingly holistic. It extends to the digital infrastructure that underpins daily operations – where incremental inefficiencies can add up to significant environmental and reputational costs.

This disconnect, what sustainability experts call a “credibility gap”, emerges when corporate pledges outpace internal change. For passengers, it’s not only about what fuels the aircraft – but how the airline operates, manages waste and empowers its staff to act sustainably. A digitally enabled crew isn’t just more efficient; it signals a company’s seriousness about modernisation and environmental alignment.

Why progress is slow

The slow pace of digital transformation among legacy carriers reflects both structural and cultural challenges. Integrating new technology into decades-old IT systems – spanning rostering, catering and inflight reporting – is complex and expensive. It requires retraining thousands of staff, updating cybersecurity protocols and managing operational risk.

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There’s also a mindset dimension. Airlines with strong service cultures, such as SIA, have long prized human interaction as a differentiator. Some within the industry fear that digital interfaces might erode the warmth and personal touch that premium brands are built upon.

Yet leading examples suggest the opposite: Emirates’ and British Airways’ digital crew apps, for instance, allow staff to anticipate passenger needs with personalised insights – enhancing, not replacing, the human connection.

Post-pandemic financial constraints have further delayed such initiatives. With capital often prioritised for fleet renewal or SAF procurement, crew digitalisation tends to fall down the investment list, despite its potential for both cost and carbon savings.

Digital sustainability is still sustainability

If the aviation sector is to achieve meaningful decarbonisation, sustainability cannot stop at the aircraft’s engine. Digital transformation should be seen as an environmental imperative – a foundation for reducing waste, improving operational efficiency and empowering staff.

A fully digital cabin ecosystem could link pre-flight briefing, inflight service and post-flight reporting into a seamless data flow. That integration enables smarter catering and inventory planning, reducing excess weight and food waste. It can also streamline crew workflows, cutting hours of manual preparation and freeing time for service delivery. The environmental benefits would therefore be matched by human ones: less stress, better focus and greater job satisfaction.

A chance for leadership

For SIA – and legacy carriers worldwide – the shift from paper to pixels represents more than a technical upgrade. It is a strategic opportunity to close the gap between sustainability rhetoric and operational reality. By embedding digitalisation into its sustainability agenda, the airline could once again set the regional benchmark, this time for holistic environmental leadership.

After all, sustainability in aviation goes beyond how efficiently an airline flies, to also how intelligently it operates. In that respect, the next great leap forward for legacy carriers may come not from the engines beneath their wings, but from the tablets in their crew’s hands.

The writer is founder of BAA & Partners